International and Language Education for a Global Future: Fifty Years of U.S. Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Programs

1. Introduction: Seeking Global Competence through the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Acts

The chapters in this volume result from the conference1 in March 2009 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Title VI Programs of the Higher Education Opportunity Act2 with the associated Fulbright-Hays programs. Congress and multiple administrations have continued support of these programs for half a century to maintain a remarkably stable focus on building more than 100 centers of excellence for modern foreign language and area studies education in more than fifty leading U.S. universities. To support that core effort, over the next three decades through the 1980s, Congress added several programs and expanded the mandates to include International Researach and Studies (IRS), Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language Program (UISFL), Language Resource Centers (LRCs), Business and International Education (BIE) and Centers for International Business Education (CIBEs), American Overseas Research Centers (AORCs), the Institute for International Public Policy (IIPP), and the Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access (TICFIA) Program. (The purposes and work of each of these are described in Appendix A.) In this introduction, we review some of the history of the Title VI programs, including the spirit of the moment of their founding during the Cold War and the twentieth-century context for their directions. Various essays in this volume C H A P T E R 1 Introduction: Seeking Global Competence through the Title VI and Fulbright-Hays Acts David S. Wiley 1 address the changing character of the programs and new directions to consider in light of new needs and the maturing of the programs. Year after year, these centers, usually providing a 4:1 (sometimes 10:1) match of university to federal funds, have built the foundation of America’s intellectual effort to comprehend the new global world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They have conducted research on internationalizing the American university, built the corpus of language learning materials for use in college and government, improved language learning pedagogies, erected the most distinguished U.S. library holdings on foreign regions, supported indepth research abroad in virtually every nation, and created capacity to teach 200 less commonly taught languages (LCTLs). Elaine Tarone’s chapter provides a broad overview of Title VI accomplishments in the LCTLs in the National Resource Centers (NRCs), LRCs, and Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) programs, affecting a range of learners from K-12 students to PhD candidates. In addition, these centers have brought new seriousness to the service or outreach mission of their agendas, offering language and area expertise to the K-12 and college communities, state and federal governments, businesses, and the media. To cope with the globalizing world, these centers do not teach insularly about customs of isolated peoples and cultures but rather teach about societies in a globalizing Africa, Asia, Latin America, and more cast in a context of global change in economics, politics, society, and communications. The MA, PhD, LLB, MBA, and other graduates of these programs have provided the core of American faculties outside the Title VI centers that have the language capacities to work abroad in and teach expertly about China, Russia, Brazil, India, Pakistan, Japan, Syria, Hungary, Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mexico, Zimbabwe , and many other countries. In 2009, the celebration of these programs was occasioned by a nearly unanimous and bipartisan agreement nationally, as voiced by Senators Richard G. Lugar and Christopher J. Dodd, that Title VI and the Fulbright-Hays programs have had a tremendous impact on our nation over the years by developing a strong foundation in international education, research and foreign language studies, especially in less-commonly taught languages that may be of U.S. strategic interest. These programs continue to be an integral part of our cultural diplomacy.3 Similarly, in March 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton wrote that . . . In tandem, Title VI programs and their Fulbright-Hays overseas counterparts have proven essential tools for developing and maintaining international expertise among American students and educators. By combining opportunities for overseas study and 2 D A V I D S . W I L E Y resarch with domestic programs aimed at foreign language instruction and area expertise , they have helped generations of Americans seize oppportunities and confront challenges on the ever-changing world stage. From the Cold War era to the current day, these programs have been essential for expanding the importance of international expertise to all aspects of modern life, from trade and technology, to healthcare delivery and...